{"id":2466,"date":"2006-05-01T15:33:05","date_gmt":"2006-05-01T15:33:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/cbs-does-something-right.html"},"modified":"2006-05-01T15:33:05","modified_gmt":"2006-05-01T15:33:05","slug":"cbs-does-something-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/cbs-does-something-right.html","title":{"rendered":"CBS does something right"},"content":{"rendered":"

Exposes the Priory of Sion fraud on 60 Minutes<\/a> (Not that it’s very challenging…)<\/p>\n

\n
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Like Plantard, de Cherisey is now dead. So where are those parchments today? French writer Jean-Luc Chaumeil, who knew both men well and inherited many of their papers, says he has them. <\/p>\n

Chaumeil says he got the parchments from de Cherisey and had them analyzed by two experts, who found that they are maybe 40 years old. <\/p>\n

Chaumeil also has a document, handwritten and signed by de Cherisey in which he describes how he created the parchments to produce what he calls "a good hoax." <\/p>\n

"But if the parchments are a hoax, if the parchments are forged, what does that do to the story of Rennes Le Chateau and the story of the Priory of Sion?" Bradley asked. <\/p>\n

"If the parchments are wrong, no, the story is finished," Chaumeil replied. <\/p>\n

None of this evidence has deterred Lincoln or his supporters, who refuse to accept that the story is finished. <\/p>\n

"I am not a na\u00efve innocent who was hoaxed by Monsieur Plantard and Cherisey. No, I am a very, very careful researcher," says Lincoln. <\/p>\n

As for Brown, he declined 60 Minutes<\/em> request for an interview. But on his official Web site, there’s a page entitled "Bizarre True Facts from The Da Vinci Code," where he continues to claim that the Priory of Sion is a European secret society that since 1099 has been guarding "a shocking historical secret." <\/p>\n

Asked where they would place this hoax in the list of hoaxes that have been perpetrated throughout history, Putnam and John Edwin Wood both say "at the top." <\/p>\n

"This is undoubtedly the most magnificent \u2014 we take our hats off in admiration to the achievement. It’s really quite extraordinary," says Putnam. <\/p>\n

But one mystery still remains, and it’s the one that began this story: Where did the priest of Rennes Le Chateau, B\u00e9renger Sauni\u00e8re, get the money to build his estate? In 1910 he was summoned to appear before the bishop’s court in the local, medieval-walled city of Carcasonne. <\/p>\n

In Carcasonne, Sauniere was tried and found guilty of trafficking in masses. Priests are allowed to accept money for saying up to three masses a day. But what Sauni\u00e8re had done was to solicit and receive money for thousands of masses, which he couldn’t possibly have said. In fact, he didn’t even try. So the source of the wealth of the priest of Rennes le Chateau was not some ancient, mysterious treasure \u2014 but good old-fashioned fraud.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Exposes the Priory of Sion fraud on 60 Minutes (Not that it’s very challenging…) Like Plantard, de Cherisey is now dead. So where are those parchments today? French writer Jean-Luc Chaumeil, who knew both men well and inherited many of their papers, says he has them. Chaumeil says he got the parchments from de Cherisey…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nCBS does something right - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/05\/cbs-does-something-right.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"CBS does something right - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Exposes the Priory of Sion fraud on 60 Minutes (Not that it’s very challenging…) Like Plantard, de Cherisey is now dead. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2466\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}